Appliances are already known in the prior art that implement a flow of air for heating or cooking food.
Such known appliances are thus provided with a fan that blows a stream of hot air over the food to be cooked, which food is disposed on a grid inside a housing.
Such prior art apparatus is specially designed so that the flow of air moves inside the housing in a cyclonic helix shape in order to facilitate heat exchange between the food and the flow of air.
Unfortunately, implementing such a cyclonic flow requires the appliance to be of relatively complex construction so as to enable air to flow around the food, while also requiring a high-power fan to be disposed in a manner that is relatively voluminous and unpleasing to the eye on the lid of the appliance.
Such prior art apparatus, which can be likened to an oven, also does not make it possible to cook or to heat up the food in a liquid cooking medium, such as, for example, a small quantity of oil.
In particular, in addition to the dynamics of the flow of air the prior art apparatus uses being relatively complex, such known apparatus does not genuinely make it possible to establish, in particularly from a thermal point of view, the conditions specific to guaranteeing that a Maillard reaction takes place that is sufficient for obtaining food having the same qualities in terms of taste as if the food were fried in a bath of oil.
It is also well known, in the prior art, that food, such as pieces of potato, can be fried in a household electric deep fryer.
In conventional manner, such a household electric deep fryer comprises a bowl designed to be filled with oil with fat, and heater resistors making it possible to heat the contents of the bowl.
Known electric deep fryers thus make it possible to provide a bath of oil or of molten fat at a high temperature and into which the food to be fried is plunged via a frying basket.
Although the conventional mode of frying by immersion into a bath of hot oil is generally satisfactory from a taste point of view, the conventional mode of frying does, however, suffer from many drawbacks.
Firstly, in order to provide the frying bath, conventional deep fryers implement a large quantity of oil. That gives rise to handling difficulties for the user when filling the deep fryer, when moving the deep fryer, and above all when emptying the deep fryer.
Such a high-temperature frying bath is also a source of a risk of being scalded, be it by oil or fat spitting from the bowl of the appliance or due to the user being clumsy (oil or fat being spilt from the appliance). That risk of scalding or of accidents is increased by the fact that such a large quantity of oil requires a relatively lengthy pre-heating stage before the food can be inserted into the bowl for frying purposes. That can lead to the user forgetting that the oil bath is being pre-heated, with all of the harmful consequences to which such absence of surveillance might give rise.
In addition, such known deep fryers are relatively costly to use since they require regular purchases of a large quantity of oil (at least 1.5 liters (1) to 2 l of oil is generally required for frying 1 kilogram (kg) of pieces of fresh potato). The user thus naturally saves oil by re-using the same frying bath a plurality of times, which is unsatisfactory from the points of view of hygiene and of taste. In addition, the user can re-use the frying bath even when the oil is degraded, which can be harmful to health. Furthermore, discarding used oil can pose serious environmental damage problems.
Finally, heating such a quantity of oil to a high temperature gives rise firstly to discharge of odors that can be particularly unpleasant, and secondly to polymerization of the oil that makes it difficult and irksome to clean the appliance.